It’s official: I think I might like Ruby. Granted, I think I still slightly prefer Python, but I’m reaching the point where Ruby syntax seems to make sense and I understand methods, variables, the different types of loops, conditionals, and iterators, and I’m ready to learn more about classes, attributes, and instance variables. The exercises assigned for this week took substantially less time than those from the week before, and I hope that this is a sign that my dream of coding proficiency from my blog post of two weeks ago will one day come true.

I’m hesitant to completely proclaim my progress, however, since the exercises for this week told us what elements we needed to use (ie. write a method using a while loop), and I’m much better at following directions than I am at figuring out the directions myself (ie. discovering when and why I would need to use a while loop). However, I suppose that knowing how to use all the building blocks of programming is half the battle, and figuring out exactly when to use them will become easier with time.

Now that we know the basics, I’m looking forward to seeing how we will move from defining short, straightforward methods to building a digital tool, since it still seems like we’re a long way away. I’m sure learning Ruby of Rails will help with the process.